The Donald and the Kremlin Don: how Trump’s toxic legacy helps Putin | Simon

Even by Donald Trump’s chaotic standards, the “comprehensive peace agreement” for Afghanistan signed by the US in Doha in February 2020 was a huge own goal.

The pact posited no binding ceasefire, no power-sharing requirements, and no political roadmap. In return for some mumbo-jumbo about al-Qaida, Trump pledged total, unconditional US and Nato withdrawal within 14 months.

This was not peacemaking. This was capitulation. The Taliban could hardly believe their luck.

Trump hoped to benefit politically from “bringing the troops home”, even though the vast majority had already left. He was otherwise wholly indifferent to the fate of the Afghan people.

Military men in the US and UK were aghast. So, too, were diplomats, politicians, aid agencies and analysts familiar with Afghanistan. But their warnings of looming catastrophe were ignored.

Despite being hobbled by official secrecy, two damning reports this month, one by a US public watchdog, the other by the UK parliament’s foreign affairs committee (FAC), lay bare the almost unbelievable incompetence of the two governments.

Boris Johnson and the then British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, failed to effectively challenge the Doha pact, then failed adequately to prepare for the 2021 withdrawal, the FAC report said.

On 8 July 2021, Johnson blithely told the Commons there was “no military path to victory for the Taliban”. On 15 August, Kabul fell. Chaos reigned. Evacuees died. Dogs were saved. But many UK-employed Afghan staff and workers were not.

Twenty years of nation-building, at a cost of tens of thousands of US, British and Afghan lives, were blown away in a few shameful days. Johnson and Raab should have resigned then, but didn’t. There’s still time, guys.

The report of the US special inspector general (Sigar) blamed the calamity on Trump as well as his successor, Joe Biden, and the then Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani.

Biden was certainly at fault. He should have insisted on renegotiating Doha and kept some US forces at Bagram base, outside Kabul. European Nato allies should have voiced their misgivings more forcibly.

But responsibility lies primarily with the man who set this lethal geopolitical car crash in motion. While boasting of his prowess as a dealmaker, Trump caved to a gang of feudal warlords, who promptly defaulted to tyranny.

Today’s ongoing Afghan tragedy is but one aspect of Trump’s toxic legacy. The negative impact of his presidency is still being felt around the world – and time is running out to dispel its noxious after-effects.

In two years’ time, Trump or a Trump-endorsed Republican clone could win back the White House. His reactionary, disruptive America First agenda may once again dictate the way the US deals, or fails to deal, with the big global challenges of the day.

This dire prospect is rendered more likely by Biden’s apparent inability, seen in Afghanistan, to fundamentally shift the dial on a range of key international issues.

It’s little wonder, for example, that occupation-related violence between Israelis and Palestinians in the…